1912 was a key year in the career of Daniel Vázquez Díaz. His exhibitions in Paris earned him international recognition. Along with Enrique Gómez Carrillo he began to collaborate with the magazine Mundial, created by Rubén Darío.

Between 1912 and 1916, he painted several portraits of his wife and son, and also this superb self-portrait in which the artist is looking straight at the spectator. Another self-portrait with similar characteristics exists that was made during the same period and belongs to Laura Vázquez Díaz, the artist’s granddaughter.

The singularity of this oil painting versus the other self-portrait is that the subject’s eyes have not been painted. Instead, the viewer finds mere shadows in a reference to the importance of one’s inner self. Vázquez Díaz did not present himself as a young artist, but as a painter who had matured during his Parisian experience.